


dead and gone

by Aryashi



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eye Trauma, Funeral, Some What the Girlfriends but it's not the focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25940197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryashi/pseuds/Aryashi
Summary: Georgie suspected Jon was dead before then. She suspected because the previous night, for the first time since they started, her dream changed.OrJon makes a different choice.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 14
Kudos: 137





	dead and gone

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings in the End Notes

Georgie knew.

Of course she knew. She knew as soon as she walked in the door. Janice sat at the same front desk as always and couldn’t bring herself to look at her eyes. Georgie Barker _knew._

But it still had to be said. Janice had to do her job, and Georgie had to stand there and receive the pronouncement. Such was the way of things.

“Janice.” It wasn’t a greeting, really. More of an acknowledgment. An opening for the nurse to say the words.

“Hello,” Janice said. She inhaled and then exhaled. “You’re here for…”

“Jonathan Sims.”

Last week, Janice had already been typing up Georgie’s pass when she walked in the door. She’d mentioned listening to the podcast, asked about the Admiral, and updated Georgie on the sweater she was struggling to knit. The question of who she was here for had not come up. Georgie could almost see Janice pulling up the script, laying it on the backs of her eyelids. The medical professional Mad Libs. The one they all had to learn and never wanted to use.

“I’m terribly sorry, Ms. Barker. Jonathan Sims passed on over the weekend.”

Even knowing with absolute certainty what the words were going to be, each syllable struck nails to her gut. For one hideous, awful moment, Georgie wished she never crawled her way back towards feeling. That all of her emotions were as cauterized as her fear; that grief, sorrow, and rage were equally distant memories.

It passed.

“Thank you, Janice. I hope your knitting turns out well.”

Georgie turned around. She left. She wept in the hospital parking lot, sobbing into her steering wheel.

* * *

Georgie suspected Jon was dead before then. She suspected because the previous night, for the first time since they started, her dream changed.

She never felt much during those nightly visions. Georgie knew what she should have been feeling. It twinged, sometimes. Like a phantom limb. The fear she would have felt if it had still been there.

Jon had been in a hospital gown, the same as the three months previous. Stared at her while the cadaver with the shaved head leaned in close, Alex lying like a broken doll on the floor next to her. He watched. He drank it all in, with a greedy, empty stare. Watched without compassion, without _comprehension._ A mindless vessel that tried to drink her fear.

 _Blood from a stone,_ she thought with some humor. _Blood from a cadaver._

The moment always lasted so long, in that dream. The corpse leaning in close, Georgie’s hands rising to cover her ears. Only there she was never fast enough. Never got her hands there in time, not even allowed the barest hint of protection. She supposed in an academic sort of sense that it must be terrifying. A perfectly tailored recreation; not of the event, but the fear of the event. Something to endlessly watch through the conduit of Jonathan Sims. Georgie hoped the entities choked on it. The mornings after the dream was the only time she relished her lack of fear, truly enjoyed the specific way she had been broken that night.

Georgie had been settled into the routine then, ready for the cadaver to tell her its promise, its truth, its spell, its prayer. She, or this dream simulation of her, would hear it and understand it. Georgie would lay down on the floor to join the others. So it always went.

“G--”

A noise. A noise that did not belong. It didn’t come from the cadaver, or Georgie, or Alex, or anyone on the floor. Georgie turned and found that she could turn. Turned back, to look at Jon.

His eyes were still blank. Still greedy, still empty, still attempting to eat her. But the rest of him was shaking. No, trembling. Weeping? In the dim light of the medical room, it was hard to tell. Jon _twitched,_ a sudden and violent motion like he’d been hit with a taser. He twitched again, stumbled forward, trying with all his might to move. Not just move, but move in a specific direction.

Towards her.

“G-Georgie,” Jon bit out, struggling against his face that was still trying to placidly watch. Every phoneme was a great and terrible weight he had to force up his throat and past his lips. “I--” Another spasm, a cut-off sound of immense pain. “I’m so. Sorry.”

Georgie watched. It was all she could do, all she’d been allowed in this breach of protocol, this break from the pattern, this diversion from the dance. But she tried to say with her face what she couldn't with her mouth.

Georgie didn’t know if there were medical tools there when she visited this place in the waking world. She didn’t even know if they had been there in the previous dreams, or been there before that exact moment. It didn’t matter. They were there then, and they were pristine, gleaming, and sharp.

Jon reached for them. He wasn’t picky, and he grabbed the first piece of metal that landed in his closed fist.

Georgie watched with compassion, with comprehension, as Jon stabbed his left eye. He screamed. The noise was guttural, animal. The dream spared him no pain and blood ran down his cheek in rivers.

Then.

Jon yanked the blood-stained bit of metal out of his head, covered in gelatinous shreds, and stabbed his other eye.

In an instant, Jon fell. A puppet with his strings cut. Another of the breathing dead coating the floor. Inhaled, exhaled. Inhaled... exhaled.

Inhaled...

Exhaled...

…

Georgie woke up.

* * *

Melanie quit the afternoon Georgie came back from the hospital. She had been typing up her resignation letter, trying to fit her hatred and anger into words. It was more of a ritual than something she expected to work. But her hands didn’t freeze up. She didn’t suddenly snarl and slam the laptop closed. Melanie finished typing up her intent to quit. Georgie leaned over her shoulder and watched as she sent it. As it went through.

Half an hour later Martin Blackwood, acting as Peter Lukas’ assistant, sent her the necessary forms to apply for severance pay and a generous reference to anywhere she wanted to work.

That one Georgie filled out. Melanie wasn’t in any fit state to do paperwork.

Later that night, they were wrapped around each other in bed, curled up close under darkness and blankets.

“... it was him dying, wasn’t it,” Melanie said, softer than she’d been in months.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think it was.”

Melanie held Georgie closer. “And he did it on purpose.”

“It felt that way, in the dream.”

“Fuck. _Fuck._ How can you hate a guy that does that?”

Georgie didn’t have a response to that. She never could figure out how to hate Jonathan Sims. She kissed Melanie’s forehead instead.

* * *

The Magnus Institute paid for the funeral. Jon had no family, no one listed as next of kin. Georgie wondered if he even had an emergency contact. Probably not. Even while they were at Uni Jon hadn’t been very social. Georgie could only imagine falling in with a monster cult burned whatever bridges he had left.

Melanie had wanted to go. Georgie hadn’t. Melanie said it would give her some closure, and then she could put that short but awful time of her life behind her. Georgie hadn’t liked it, but she agreed to go with her. Say her goodbyes.

The dead didn’t hear anything if they were properly gone. Funerals were for the living, and Georgie wasn’t much interested in meeting the people who refused to quit when given the chance.

The chapel was small. An impersonal kind of religious, with pews, an altar, and the open casket, but no attachment or community to tie it together. Georgie and Melanie were two of less than a dozen people, counting the priest and not counting Jon. Georgie spotted some half-remembered acquaintances from Oxford, huddled together near the back. They waved her over, and she made nice. Did some token catching up, introduced them to Melanie. Melanie gave monosyllabic answers and squeezed Georgie’s hand hard enough to make the bone creak.

Basira sat in the middle of the rows, watching the casket like she expected it to explode at any moment. She wore all black but made no move to approach the group. Melanie’s grip loosened, and she went to go sit with Basira. Georgie didn't like it, but she wasn't Melanie's keeper. Basira still working for the Institute didn't mean she would drag Melanie back in with one conversation.

Georgie couldn't focus on the conversation after Melanie left. She gave the old friends some vague answers about Jon and what happened to him and left them to draw their own conclusions. If they were smart, they wouldn't dig any deeper than that. Leaving the conversation, Georgie went to the front of the room.

There was Martin Blackwood. Georgie recognized him on sight. Jon talked her ear off about him during that too brief time he’d come to her looking for sanctuary. Tall, broad, round, curly hair, and a propensity towards jumpers. But there was none of the nervous energy Jon had described. He stood by the casket with an expression Georgie knew all too well. She had seen it in the mirror for months after that night. Deadened. Distant. Done.

Georgie approached. Martin smelled like fog, as though he had just come in from a long walk on the moors. The air around him was colder than the rest of the church by a fair few degrees. He didn’t acknowledge her, and she didn’t break the silence. Instead, she looked down at Jon.

The coroner had cleaned him up nice, worked very hard to cover the myriad scars and the circles under his eyes. He looked a little like the Jonathan Sims she knew before, back when he was skinny instead of skeletal, anxious instead of paranoid, snarky instead of acerbic. Only a little, though. Even the thickest layers of makeup could do so much.

Georgie didn’t know as much about the gods, or entities, as Jon had. Or as much as Martin did for that matter. She didn’t know if it was just her observation skills or some sort of like sensing like, magnets of the same pole reacting. What she did know, with absolute certainty, was that the corpse lying in front of her was Jon, and Jon was completely, utterly dead.

“Oh, Elias is going to _hate_ this.”

Georgie didn’t startle, for obvious reasons. Instead, she looked over towards the man who had suddenly appeared at her side. He was wearing a captain’s hat of all things. It complimented the navy blue coat he wore over a proper black suit. His smile felt as real as the plastic flowers lying on the casket.

“Peter,” Martin said.

“Oh don’t act so cold Martin! We’re only at a funeral.”

Georgie watched him carefully, trying to gauge how much of a threat this strange man was. “Hello. Georgie Barker.” She didn’t extend her hand, and the man seemed to appreciate that.

“Peter, Peter Lukas. Head of the Magnus Institute while Elias is cooling his heels, so to speak.”

She nodded slightly.

“So… who’re you to the bereaved?”

“Ex-girlfriend.”

“Aaah.”

The conversation died, and Georgie was perfectly happy to let it rot. Surprisingly enough, it was Martin who picked it up again.

“What do you want, Peter?”

He stroked his salt-and-pepper beard once before replying. “Oh, not much. Just taking in the atmosphere. Nothing quite as lonely as a funeral for a man with no friends.” Peter chuckled to himself. “Besides, it’s always fun to watch one of Elias’ little schemes fall apart underneath him.” He leaned forward and knocked two half curled fingers on the casket. “He put a lot of effort into this one too… Such a darn shame,” Peter said with a grin a mile wide.

Georgie decided abruptly that she hated Peter Lukas. She inhaled to inform him of this, but Martin beat her to it.

“He wasn’t a _scheme.”_ The venom coated his voice. Martin Blackwood was not a small man, and Georgie noticed that his hands were curled into tight fists.

Peter shrugged it off. “Well, one less complication for us, eh? Besides, if he’d come back… well, I don’t think you would’ve liked it much.”

Martin tears his gaze away from Jon for the first time since Georgie approached, and she could tell that unless she did something right that second, there was going to be a fistfight right next to Jon’s casket.

“Could I have a moment alone with him?” Georgie said. Peter and Martin both turned to look at her. “Please.”

Peter held a hand to his chest. “Of course. Who would I be if I denied someone time alone?”

Martin scowled even more than he already was. “You’re not going to do anything at Jon’s _funeral.”_

Peter shrugged again. “If you say so.”

Martin stared at him, but Peter eventually wandered off. Martin followed.

It was just Georgie and Jon.

In movies, in books, even in the few funerals Georgie had personally attended before, this would be the moment she talked to Jon. Said her goodbyes, got some closure. But Jon was dead and gone to wherever he was going, and Georgie didn’t have much she wanted to say to his body.

Georgie could only hope that Jon understood what she had been trying to say with her expression, in that last dream.

_I understand._

_I forgive you._

_Goodbye._

After a long moment, Georgie left. She went back to her girlfriend and sat next to her in the pews. The service would begin soon, and once it was over they could put The Magnus Institute and its poison behind them for good.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning  
> \- Jon stabs out his eyes with a medical tool and it it described in detail  
> \- References to hospitals and deaths in hospitals  
> \- Peter Lukas enjoying a funeral entirely too much
> 
> this exists mostly because I got the image of Jon deciding to die in a dream, and it stuck with me all the way up to the reveal that Jon dying frees the assistants from the Institute. So I had to write it!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [lines and waves](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941694) by [Prim_the_Amazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing)




End file.
